Back Porch Light Fixture

I had a coupon for Lowes, so I picked up a light fixture a while ago. Today I installed it.

Now it matches the light fixtures on the front of the house.

I painted the vent for the range hood, per HOA guidelines. I think it looked better before, but it is less noticeable now.

I also did some painting touch-up in that general area after I touched up some paint around the solar equipment. And with that wrapped up, I put the paint back inside the house for the winter.

Cabinet Crown Moulding

(Is "moulding" British? Google returned both "molding" and "moulding")

While I was at work today, Patrick showed up at our house (as arranged earlier) and installed crown moulding on the kitchen cabinets, hiding the duct work I installed this weekend, and generally making the kitchen look much much fancier.

I really wasn't expecting this step until well after Lincoln's birth (due date is December 2nd!) but it sure looks nice to have it done. As nice as it is to have a functioning range hood, the duct work sure was ugly. And now you can't see it!

Thank you very much Patrick: it looks beautiful.

Closet Door Pulls

Finally got around to replacing these in the nursery and guest bedroom.

Sick Day

Well, I caught something that completely sapped my energy yesterday. I stayed home from work and watched a lot of TV. I was able to replace that ugly yellow door bell with a $5 black version. I picked it to match our new exterior lights.

Ugly Old Doorbell

We had a tragedy a few days ago: the birds' nest fell down, and the baby birds didn't make it. This hit Brianna particularly hard. Now, in the top left corner of the above picture, you can see a metal basket, firmly anchored to the house. It's tilted for drainage and to provide a better viewing angle. Hopefully we'll have better luck with baby birds next year.

I dug out a section of wire fencing from the backyard junk pile (left to us by the sellers) and corralled a flowering shrub back from the walk way (it had already taken over fifty percent of the walkway).

Our "curb-appeal" is improving. It's a nice change from painting, actually. But I'm going to have to do something about all the stains and cracks in our driveway sometime in the near future.

Oh, one more thing: our bird feeder has an exterior wire mesh hung on springs. It is designed to allow birds access to the birdseed, but to close under the weight of a squirrel, and it seems to have done that job well. At least, we haven't seen any squirrels on it. However, some crows have been digging out the bigger seeds and scattering the smaller ones. I adjusted the springs to be a lot looser. The smaller birds haven't had a problem with it - I have not seen a crow attempt to eat from the feeder since I made the adjustment.

Painting Trim

Brianna painted the trim in the first guest bedroom over the weekend. It looks pretty fantastic all fresh and newly painted. We still have to touch up the ceiling color, but this room is getting awfully close to being done.

As usual, we have some IKEA stuff in here: we hung the curtain wire over the weekend, and put what was supposed to be a shower curtain on it. I had picked up the shower curtain at IKEA for a couple bucks, thinking Brianna might like it for a window curtain. Brianna claims the colors on the curtain go really well with the paint in this room, and I guess I'll have to believe her.

I also found a full-sized bed frame at IKEA last week, for $30. It had one little scratch on a side rail: we'll push that side against the wall. I still have to assemble the drawers, and we haven't purchased a center rail, slats or a mattress for this bed yet, so it's going to sit unfinished for a little while.

Of course, part of getting this room into the finishing stages was taking the debris out. For now, some of it simply shifted one room over:

More Switches

I updated the switches in the master water closet.

Before

Now

On the left is a dimmer switch from the clearance section at Home Depot. It's a digital dimmer, which is supposed to work better with LED bulbs, and it seems to be true: this one can dim a Cree bulb a lot lower than the old one could. On the right is a digital timer for the bathroom fan - just press the button to cycle through the time-length options. And because it's digital, the only noise is from the fan - no clicking from the timer.

I moved the old dimmer to the guest bathroom, which still has decorative incandescent bulbs - it works rather well there.

I'm going to have to find another digital dimmer to handle the decorative (non-Cree) LEDs in the master bath:

Eight of those 40-Watt equivalents taken together are bright, especially if I have to brush my teeth after Brianna has already gone to bed. Apparently it's "Soooooo nice for putting on makeup" though, so I can't get away with a more permanent solution, like removing a few of the bulbs. :-P

Detail Work

Yesterday Brianna helped me re-install the ceiling fan in the living room:

I bought a combined light-and-fan-control switch, which includes a dimmer function. The CFLs we have don't work with dimmers, and we're out of Cree LED bulbs, so there are incandescents in there for the time being. Unfortunately, one of them exploded the second time it was turned on:

Fortunately, all the glass landed on painter's plastic, so I was able to just roll up the plastic and throw it all in the garbage.

We also put a lot of finishing touches on the hallway.

I re-installed the Nest Protect smoke alarm, installed a new light fixture (which matches the ones in the kitchen) and replaced the return-air grill in the lower right corner. I wound up cutting off the old security system control panel, putting up a low-profile conduit box, and wrapping the spare wire inside of it. I'm not sure what I'll use the wire for eventually, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

While I was doing all that, Brianna took pity on me, and did all the taping work yesterday, taping off the trim in the kitchen. Once the trim is painted, we can start moving things back into the room, and the house will look a little less like a construction zone.

I was planning to do some electrical work (replacing switches) in the afternoon, but it started to thunderstorm, so we went to see the latest X-men movie instead. Brianna and I both enjoyed it! Wish they could get the X-men back into the Marvel Movie universe so they could tie-in with the Avengers, but oh well, it was still fun.

Progress Update on Bathroom

Got a new, slow-close toilet seat installed, and hung the curtain on a rod that Brianna had spray-painted silver. Still need to hang the towel rack I got from IKEA as-is for $3, paint the trim, and do something about that window sill. But between today and hanging that quilt, this bathroom is coming together nicely. In fact, it worked great the entire weekend the girls were here!